With the advent of MP3 players the popularity of audio books has taken off. Early audio books were limited in length to the cassettes or compact discs on which they were recorded. However, with MP3 players and other personal electronic devices that play various types of audio computer files the length of the recording rarely presents a limit on the work.
Images can help tremendously in providing information to a book reader. One shortcoming of the audio book format is that it lacks the ability of displaying images. These images could vary from maps, graphs and diagrams to drawings and pictures.
Additionally as the length of the recording increases it becomes more difficult to edit the audio recording. Even the most talented narrator must go back and do additional takes on portions of the text being recorded. It can be time consuming to locate a specific portion of audio that needs to be redone. In addition to the audio portion the corresponding text must also be located. What initially appears as a straight forward task can quickly turn into a time consuming chore. Once it has been re-recorded the recording or take must be mixed into the master recording. The same problems occur here where the take must be placed in the correct sequential order.
What is needed, therefore, is a method and apparatus that can manipulate the text and audio of a work.
Additionally what is needed is a method and apparatus that can locate portions of a text and then locate the corresponding audio recording.
Further, what is needed is a method and apparatus which allows the narrator or editor to make notes on the text while editing.